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So yesterday I posted about the repulsive, rapey banners that some frat guys hung from the balcony of their frat at Old Dominion University in Virginia. Banners that were so obviously problematic that the school administration immediately suspended the frat to investigate.
Here. as a reminder, are the banners in question:
I also quoted Amanda Marcotte, who noted that, when faced with clear evidence of rape culture like these banners, rape apologists like to
suddenly pretend they are aliens from another planet and only learned human language last week and therefore are incapable of picking up on humor, implication, non-verbal communication and nuanced language. They pretend to ascribe to a form of communication so literal that even the slightest bit of metaphor or implication, to hear them talk, sends them spinning into a state of confusion.
After I put up my post yesterday, several rape culture deniers wandered into my Twitter mentions, as if to prove Marcotte’s point, posting pictures of banners put up by sorority women at the school and demanding to know why I wasn’t attacking these women for their alleged promotion of rape culture as well.
@DavidFutrelle HOW HORRIBL- … wait, what happens if i look to the right? ohhh i see … nice try :^) pic.twitter.com/ViClZV0RBu
— Dragunov (@NkDragunov) August 25, 2015
https://twitter.com/WoolyBumblebee/status/636343927914786817
I suspect most of you are as nonplussed by this as I was. Because these banners don’t actually promote rape culture. And not because the people holding them up are women, not men.
The frat’s banners have a creepy, predatory edge to them. They are addressed not to the incoming freshmen women, but to the fathers of these women. They strongly suggest that any woman who walks through their doors — or is “dropped off” by dad — is going to be shown a “rowdy … good time” whether she’s “ready” for it or not.
They don’t explicitly use the word “rape” but given how completely they erase the agency of the young women in question they might as well just do that.
The rape threat is implicit, not explicit, but it is clear enough that most people seeing these banners can understand in an instant what they “really mean” and what the problem is.
The banners held up by the sorority women are a different thing entirely. They don’t put forth the message: “we are going to do things to you (whether you like it or not).” They are playful, not threatening, and tell prospective dates “we like sex, and if you get with us you might even get to do ‘butt stuff.'”
The first banner only asks that men pull out before they come; no one wants any babies. The second tells men they are “welcome” to use the back door, nudge nudge. Instead of saying “we will do things to you,” they say “you can do things to us.” Presumably in the context of consensual sex.
Just as rape =/= sex, talking about sex =/= talking about rape.
Is it creepy that when new freshmen men arrive on the campus they’re greeted with giant banners aimed at them and laden with sexual innuendo? Maybe, but it’s nowhere near as creepy as banners greeting freshman women (and their mothers) with not-very-subtle threats of rape.
I tried to get this point across to one of my Twitter interlocutors, the antifeminist Youtube gadfly WoolyBumblebee; it didn’t take. Some excerpts of the ensuing “discussion.”
Rape threats, even implicit ones, are rape culture. Mentions of sex aren’t. You’d think this wouldn’t be hard to understand.
Does WoolyBumblebee really not understand that if someone says “you can put it in my butt” they are not threatening to rape you?
It might not be the appropriate thing to bring up at, say, a dinner party. And if you say it repeatedly to someone not interested in sex with you, it would be sexual harassment.
But it wouldn’t be a rape threat.
WoolyBumblebee more or less conceded this point shortly afterwards. And returned to claiming (or pretending) she didn’t see the threat in the banners posted by the frat guys.
Around and around we go!
Or we would have if I hadn’t gotten off the internet to watch an episode of Mr. Robot.
The question I am left with, as I generally am in the wake of “discussions” with those who seem to be incapable of understanding the basics of human language, is this: Are these people really this literal-minded and obtuse, or are they just pretending?
If the former, how exactly do they manage to even work a computer? Did they make bird noises at their laptop or into their phone for weeks on end before someone explained that’s not how Twitter works? Do they understand the difference between filing their nails and filing their taxes?
It’s gotta be an act, right?
@Dodom
You see, I can understand that shit. The Canadian government should either get their shit together. Hopefully things get better before shit hits the fan for you guys.
Haha, grammar errors.
@Paradoxical Intention
You did, and for a good reason:
I mean, yes, I already knew all that, but the way I put “believing that bad people should be called innocent even when their victims and their own fuckin’ words condemn them, as long as a group of privileged people (generally judges and juries) have not given their take on the subject is siding with bullies” made it sound like I ignore the fact that this is exactly the way the world works in many instances.
I worded things badly, and you corrected me. My apologies.
Anyway, Vetarnias is tedious, wrong and their obsession with the infallibility of “the law” only reminds me of a much funnier, albeit fictional, character.
And often, they are treated like innocent victims even in that case. Blargh. I’ll just shut my trap for good now. i don’t particularly like the taste of my foot.
@Scented fucking hard chairs
Going back a bit… I don’t understand how mocking him for getting angry at the word “Canadian” is racist. If anybody had posted assholish anti-French “Jokes,” sure, that’d absolutely be racist… But “Quebec is still a part of Canada”?”
I think it’s a bit like misgendering a Trans person is transphobia. He doesn’t identify as Anglo, so it’s not our place to mock him for it, or tell him that his oppression isn’t “real”. Sure toxic troll is boring and toxic, but you’d think that as feminists we would know better, especially since feminists are being constantly told that our oppression isn’t “real”, or that we should STFU because “things are worse elsewhere/for other people”.
Same goes for MRAs. Just because they wrongly blame their oppression on a nonexistent matriarchy, doesn’t mean that they don’t face legitimate oppression such as classism, racism, or even sexism/toxic masculinity. And so on and so on. 🙂
Actually, I do have one serious question for the troll, because I’ve seen a lot of right-wing types making similar claims. I just can’t figure it out, though, and no one has been able to adequately explain it yet (at least not without devolving into blatant, unabashed racism).
When you wrote this:
Are you actually serious, or are you just being hyperbolic?
Because I can’t see any mechanism whereby those ISIS fucks can do anything but slightly annoy “Civilization, capital C.” Yes, they can kill a bunch of people, but they are far too few to actually collapse any first-world nation, and they never will be.
You liken them to a rogue state later in that paragraph, but they can’t even rise to that level – and even if they could, they still wouldn’t be strong enough to collapse any first-world nation (and they would have given up one of their primary military strengths: their mobility).
So what the fuck are you on about with “threat to Civilization” crap?
Is it really just your terrified belief that all muslims are eeeeeebil?
Because that’s the only explanation I’ve ever gotten from everyone I’ve ever asked.
Crap.
Fourth paragraph, second sentence should read:
The whole secede thing is of course interesting to me as a Brit. Not sure how much you’re bothered about Brit politics but that’s a big thing here.
There are many Scots who certainly wouldn’t identify as British. We’ve just had a referendum for independence. The vote was for staying part of Britain but my a tiny margin and in the General Election the Scottish National Party took all but 3 of the seats.
The Scots do seem to keep their independence seeking to non-violent means though.
The Welsh separatists engaged in some property damage (mainly burning down buildings) but again it was mainly a political campaign. The Welsh now have their own Assembly (as sort of mini parliament) and they seem to be happy with that for now.
There’s a minor strand of Cornish nationalism but it’s not particular popular and our terrorist groups is pretty rubbish. So far all they’ve managed to do is blow up a hair-dressers (the building they were actually after was next door)
Northern Ireland though is a *BIG* issue. We’ve had literally thousands of deaths (much more than 9/11). There weren’t just limited to people directly involved like soldiers, police and members or the Royal Family. PIRA considered all non-PIRA legitimate targets. We had plenty of bombing campaigns against civilians, including children, and shootings of entire families were common.
[One of the reasons we shrugged of the 7/7 attacks was that they were barely a pin prick compared to what we normally got]
Things are relatively calm now. We’ve signed a truce with the main terrorists and there’s now a power sharing agreement in place. There are still some groups who don’t agree with that so we do have the occasional killing.
Feelings do run high though. It can be easy to dismiss people’s feelings and say, ‘well what does it matter? Would you be better off with independence?’ but self determination is as much an emotional as practical thing.
Unionists (i.e. people who want to keep everyone as British) often make the economic arguments that people are better off being British, but that’s not really the issue.
So I can understand the Quebecois thing and why it can be a major issue to people who live there.
@ Gaebolga
FWIW here’s something I wrote in The Guardian comments a while back. It actually turned into a really interesting discussion about counter-factual military history, but I digress:
So basically my position is ‘interventionist’ even if there’s no actual benefit to ‘us’. I know that’s controversial but ‘None of our business’ was the default position on domestic violence, and that’s something else on which I’m pretty interventionist.
@ Alan Robertshaw
Oh, I quite agree, especially regarding ISIS; I’m certainly not saying we should just let them be. Military intervention – although it has its own host of issues – seems the only rational response.
My issue is with the overblown, apocalyptic rhetoric that many conservatives use to describe the threat they pose. I have yet to see a single one of them back up their claims with any mechanism that would make those claims even remotely credible. As I noted in my post above, when I ask about the specifics of their claims, they either admit that they were exaggerating for effect or go full racist.
And while it may seem like a minor point, I believe that when left unchallenged, this kind of dishonest argument leads to a degradation of discourse as a whole. If we let people get away with exaggerations and lies and bullshit, then people start using those rhetorical tactics more often, and we all suffer for it.
(peers in)
Is the troll still here?
(Yes.)
Still being obtuse?
(Yes.)
Still idiotic?
(Yes.)
Still a rape apologist?
(Apparently.)
All right, then.
(out)
@ Gaebolga
For me it’s when politicians say “This is an existential threat like we’ve never seen before”
Were they asleep during the Cold War? Now *that* was an existential threat. We were minutes away from total annihilation for the best part of three decades.
We did get some cool movies though; so swings and roundabouts.
[Also, someone named after a magical spear should understand the need for violence occasionally 😉 ]
And a particularly nasty magic spear, to boot. 🙂
Yeah, I was always a bit of a black sheep to the hippy side of my family. We weren’t allowed to have toy guns in the house as a kid, so I made mine out of Legos. Nevertheless, my time growing up in a commune did give me a pretty clear understanding that violence is often counterproductive.
On a related note, I once used the venerable cliché about “when the only tool you’ve got is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail” with regards to military intervention a while ago, and the guy I was talking to replied “yeah, but sometimes if you don’t use the hammer, you get screwed.”
Those two phrases together sum up my feelings on the matter using violence really, really well.
The banners are clearly aimed at teasing the parents, and at least one is particularly aimed at teasing the fathers.
There banners don’t imply rape at all. I remember reading in the Female Eunuch Germane Greer arguing that women “want to fuck and suck just like men do” and bemoaning the double-standards where it is thought that women don’t/shouldn’t be as sexually promiscuous as men. The message behind these banners might just as likely be an acknowledgment of women’s sexual liberation, and the posters held up by the female students would concur with this interpretation.
You may well have inferred a subliminal rape message, but that doesn’t mean it was implied.
As for this being evidence of rape culture, even if the banners were inciting rape, this would only be evidence of a rape culture within that particular fraternity. The removal of the banners and the suspension of the fraternity suggests that the wider community (the college) does not have a rape culture – in fact it has a culture of being extremely anti “rape culture”.
If that were the case, as others have pointed out, those banners would be talking directly to the women they want to sleep with – like the sorority banners were talking directly to the men – rather than to the parents, in the case of the first two (which is an extremely generous interpretation given the wording of the third banner), and the husband in the case of the third.
But they don’t. Which is why they’re examples of rape culture.
By not addressing the women they want to sleep with, they’re implying – rather strongly – that the women have no say in the matter.
Gah, pre-emtivley Ninja’d by Gaebolga
I had a great polemic about the history of the “Lock up your daughters” mentality lined up.
It had quotes and everything.
Well, if it had quotes….
…I want to read it.
“Teasing” is a pretty mild word for creepily playing into the cultural concept of fathers being the owners of their daughters’ sexual lives, and therefore deserving to be afraid of the idea that their “baby girl” might go out and have sex with people. And for similarly playing into the cultural notion of husbands owning their wives in the same way they own their daughters.
All while ignoring the agency of either set of women.
You didn’t even read this post, did you? The sorority banners, while explicit, talk about what the banner-makers would be up for doing. They are talking about themselves. The frat banners are talking about what other people will be doing, and using that image to try to scare the assumed owners of those people. The two sets of banners couldn’t be more different.
Telling fathers to drop off their daughters and wives because obviously those daughters and wives would say yes to sex is the complete opposite of acknowledging agency. And given the recent rash of “no means yes, yes means anal” type things frats have been filmed chanting, it’s kind of a stretch to assume that they are even thinking that the daughters and wives would say “yes.”
I would say that your interpretation requires a massive extrapolation from the known facts. The more obvious interpretation is that they’re teasing the parents. I suspect that the female students are doing likewise.
Yes, they are “teasing” the fathers by saying that the fathers’ daughters might as well be dropped off in front of the frat because the frat members are going to have sex with the fathers’ “baby girls.” Do you not see how this is fucked up?
Kirbywarp at 10.59
You have your first point completely back-to-front. Teasing a father by telling him that he doesn’t have control over his daughters’ sex lives is actually progressive and undermines patriarchal attitudes of husbandry.
On your second point, yes I read it but drew a different conclusion to David. There are differences for sure, but both would have the effect of winding-up your average father. In that respect they’re the same.
Your last sentence suggests to me that you are not interpreting these banners for what they actually say, but by what you believe is behind them based upon what some other frats have said.
@ Gaebolga
Well it started with this:
That’s the lyric from the Slade song “Lock up your daughters”. I thought it tied in nicely with the banners.
Then I was going to segway into the original musical “Lock up your daughters” by Lionel Bart.
And then just as I was leading people into thinking “well maybe it is all just a bit of ‘harmless’ fun” I was going to reveal that the musical is based upon an 18th Century Fielding play.
That play of course being “Rape Upon Rape”
That was my sort of twist ending proving my thesis that what is argued to be just ‘banter’ is actually a veneer on what is clearly pure rape culture.
You made the point a bit more succinctly though. Bollocks.
Oh, and it also had a little diversion about the historicity of people not taking rape seriously and seeing it as a source of humour:
What kind of an idiot looks at communication devoid of its context?
Look, as someone pointed out (maybe on a different thread), the statement “hope your baby girl is ready for a good time…” reads completely differently if it’s a banner set up at a day care center. Reading things while ignoring the context they’re presented in is an incredibly simplistic and superficial way of reading, so much so that if you’re an adult, it’s reasonable to assume that you’re doing it intentionally.
So in the context of this being a frat house, given all of the shit that frat houses have been in the news for lately, what the banners “actually say” is very much driven by that context.
And given that the banners completely ignore the women they want to have sex with – not even addressing them directly, because why bother? – it lines up pretty well with the ongoing issues frats in general have regarding lack of consent. That context alone means that these guys aren’t entitled to the benefit of the doubt.
That would be the same Slade that wrote “Skweeze Me, Pleeze Me”:
[shudder]